A standard printed circuit board (PCB) based interconnect may have significant transmission losses. Transmission losses may be greater at higher frequencies. For example, a 20 inch channel of a multilayer PCB may have a loss of about 37 db at about 10 Ghz. The transmission losses may be reduced by, for example, constructing the PCB using materials having better dielectric characteristics and eliminating or minimizing discontinuities in the PCB.
However, even with better composite materials and elimination or reduction of discontinuities, significant losses may still be observed over long transmission links, particularly at high data rates (e.g., 20 inches at 20 Gigabits/second). Also, the use of better composite materials may be costly to implement.
Thus, there is a general need for an interconnect structure and method suitable for efficient high frequency data transmissions.